Summary:
Jenkins County Elementary School is the sole elementary school in the Jenkins County district, serving grades PK through 5 in Millen, GA, with 601 students and a 100% free/reduced lunch population.
This school stands out for its significant resource investment—spending $14,339 per student with a favorable 11.9:1 student-teacher ratio—yet it faces notable academic challenges. The most concerning trend is a dramatic drop in 5th-grade science proficiency, falling from 24.2% in 2024-2025 to just 10.5% in 2025-2026, compared to a state average of 44.2%. Similarly, 5th-grade math has remained stagnant at 26.4% for two consecutive years, creating a clear "5th-grade slump" where students trail their 3rd-grade peers by 16.6 percentage points and 4th-grade peers by 17.8 percentage points. On a more positive note, 3rd-grade math improved from 37.9% to 43.0% year-over-year, and 4th-grade math nearly matched the state average in 2024-2025 at 48.8% versus 49.0%. The school also outperforms its district in chronic absenteeism, with a rate of 28.3% compared to the district's 44.3%, though both remain well above the state's 17.7%.
In the most recent ELA data (2024-2025), the school outperformed its district across all grade levels, coming within 3.6 to 9.1 percentage points of state averages, suggesting literacy is a relative strength. However, the school's overall ranking has declined from the 42nd percentile in 2024-2025 to the 30th percentile in 2025-2026, with its star rating dropping from 2 to 1. While the school demonstrates pockets of success in early-grade math and ELA despite serving an exclusively high-poverty population, the combination of declining science scores, stagnant upper-grade math, and elevated absenteeism suggests that current strategies may need recalibration—particularly in upper-elementary instruction—to ensure early gains translate into sustained success as students advance.
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